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Details about Baby Horse

So it is safe to say that I’m beyond tickled with how Paige’s baby has turned out. He’s colored up perfectly and is a very personable little guy who is pretty fearless so far. All he wants to do when given enough room is lope around. Paige is pretty adamant that he stay with her…in that she chases him everywhere because she has no control over him. They got to go out in the donkey paddock yesterday for a while to stretch out and he took full advantage of that. So, enjoy some pictures from the last couple days while I tell you about when he was born. 🙂

Paige loves her baby.

So Thursday night, Paige had the exact same signs that she had for several nights prior, enlarged vulva, testing around 6.0 pH and 500 or so calcium, and very little wax. A and I are taking a large animal vet assisting class, so I told our instructor (who is a vet tech at the local vet hospital) that I was on foal watch, and that if I seemed to be looking at my phone a lot, it was to watch my mare on the camera. She was totally fine with that, but Paige didn’t do anything out of the ordinary.

Friday morning, Jason got up early for a day of clinicals (he’s in nursing school) in a nearby town and left the house at 6:15am. I woke up when I heard him leaving and rolled over to look at the camera and saw Paige pacing her stall…which is very unlike her. Paige is very lazy practical and doesn’t walk just for the sake of walking generally. If she’s crossing the stall, it is to get hay on one side or water on the other. When she got to either, she didn’t eat or drink. She looked out over her water out the front door of the barn as if looking for her friends, and I thought that something had stirred up the outside horses and she was pacing around because she could hear them running. After watching for a couple more minutes, I noticed she was looking at the floor as if considering laying down. This made me realize that she was very likely in labor. I jumped out of bed and threw clothes on and, as I was walking out the door, she laid down.

It’s safe to say that I drove to the barn quickly and literally watched Paige push him out on the camera as I drove. I had been texting A to tell her that things looked suspicious with Paige, and she was already dressed so she beat me there. When I pulled in, she met me at the door to the barn and told me that the baby was colored beautifully. We went in the stall and Paige had gotten him out of the sac and was cleaning him. When we started drying him with towels, Paige seemed to think we were doing a good job without her, so she laid down to rest. We initially thought he was buckskin, but when I was drying him, I looked down and saw his tiny dorsal stripe and declared him dun. Once he dried off, we realized he was much lighter, and was more likely to be a dunskin. It will be exciting to see how he looks once his baby hair sheds off.

Paige has been a wonderful mother so far. She grooms on him often and refuses to let him out of her sight for a second, despite his natural tendencies towards independence…and loping. So much loping. She has to trot/lope to keep up with him when he gets going, particularly if he’s headed towards a fenceline where there are other horses. She refuses to let him interact with another horse so far.

He is very friendly and has met a lot of friends and family so far and has let them pet him…if I make him stand still. Otherwise he wants to be on the go. I’m happy that the longest part of his tail is black, so it won’t show dirt as easily as if it were all white…let’s face it, the rest of him will show enough dirt to make up for it. 😉 I’m glad I took these outdoor pictures when I did since he’s still so clean. His knees were dirty last night from kneeling in her poop and now that I’m back at work and unable to clean the stall 4x a day, he’s likely to get even more dirty. 😦

The stallion owner has posted him on the sire’s (Hollywood Reminic) page, and has already received a message asking if he is for sale, to which I replied that he is not for sale. When the universe grants you your dream baby, you keep him. It is pretty flattering to have people inquiring when your baby is less than 72 hours old.

I think some people probably questioned my decision to breed Paige, after all, her pedigree isn’t exactly something that is terribly impressive, and I myself felt kind of self conscious breeding her when all the other mares bred to Tanner have some sort of relevant reining lineage. I’m personally not a huge proponent of breeding animals for the sake of breeding animals, or for the purpose of making money (unless your animals are the pinnacle of their sport and are thus likely to sell to a great home), or unless you intend to keep said products of your breeding for your own uses for the duration of their life. I figured I fit into that last category, that I intended to keep this baby to be my next riding horse once his mother ages and he really comes into himself. I think my timing was pretty great since she’s 17. She could have many many more years of riding to go, but she’ll be 20 when he’s being started, and he’ll be able to step up into the role of regular riding horse as she settles into her 20’s and she will have earned her retirement at that point.

He still doesn’t have a name…but I’m actively working on it. So far I’ve liked Remy, Andy, Levi (previous dog’s name), etc. Any two syllable boy names that you think would fit him based on pictures? 😉

Also…I forgot to note this…guess which day in APRIL she decided to have her baby:

It was literally blowing snow.

I might have been there when he was born if I hadn’t had to pull on leggings under my jeans. 😉 Luckily he came out strong and we were there to dry him off quickly, wrap him in blankets and shove him under a heat lamp. 35 degrees is too cold to have babies in case anyone was wondering. Brrr.

Paigey got to wear a cooler to help her stay warm where she got a little sweaty giving birth.

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Hi, I’m Sarah and I own a farm in rural SWVA where I board a couple horses and keep my small (but growing) herd. I use this space to chronicle my life with my four legged friends, both equine and canine and am glad to have you tune in! :)

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